


Stapled Together

by ratpoet



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, back when the Gallaghers were worth rooting for, kind of, pre- season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 23:09:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3955414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratpoet/pseuds/ratpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Has Lip woken up yet?” Fiona asks, gentle but brisk, each word suddenly measured, designed to make their dysfunctional family start functioning. Debbie wonders how many of Fiona’s smiles are intended for herself, and how many are carefully aimed arrows, flitting to puncture their targets cleanly each time- ‘<i>I'm okay, we’ll all be okay</i>’s, ‘<i>don’t worry sweetie</i>’s and ‘<i>we’ll make this work</i>’s. All designed to keep them going.</p><p>Debbie wonders what's really holding up their house, Fiona and her hands and everything she does to make sure they’re fed, warmed and safe, or Fiona and her smiles and everything she does to make them forget how shitty they actually have it.<br/>“I think he’s still asleep,” Debbie says softly. Only five minutes till the alarms start blaring.</p><p>Debbie only has these five minutes, and Fiona’s slipping already, being replaced in bits and pieces by Big Sister Fiona, her shoulders drooping from all the weight she has to carry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stapled Together

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe how I suddenly start getting the burning urge to write every time I open my textbooks to study :P

Debbie wakes up to the sound of Fiona heaving into the toilet.

She pushes the blankets off her bed and focuses on the alarm clock through bleary eyes. Six forty five- fifteen minutes till show time.

For a second, all she wants to do is lie back down in bed, cover her ears with her pillow, and fall asleep. But she’s already awake, and Fiona needs her as much as she ever does (which may not be a lot, but Debbie’s fine with that).

Debbie gets up and stumbles out of the door, still a little sleepy. She sighs as she pushes the bathroom door open, wrinkling her nose against the stench of stale vomit and dirty clothes.

The bathroom’s dark and quiet, Fiona’s heavy breathing the only sound. Fiona’s quiet now, stable, her head hanging over the toilet, hair falling into her eyes. Debbie switches on the tube light as she enters.

“Hey,” Debbie mumbles, pulling the plastic stool Lip had bought for Liam to stand on a long time back towards herself and sits down next to Fiona, pulling her hair out of her eyes gently. She smoothes her hand over Fiona’s head, brushing the stray strands behind her ears, the same way Fiona used to do when Debbie was younger.

“Mornings, Debs,” Fiona croaks out, eyes flicking to Debbie’s face. She looks tired, all the excitement of last night wrung out from her skin, her face stark under the harsh white lights. Her hair’s undone, dirty and dishevelled, a far cry from last night’s sleek updo, and she’s wearing an old ratty t-shirt over her underwear, last night’s newly ironed clothes ditched somewhere between the kitchen and the stairs as she and the guy she’d picked up had made their way up the stairs, giggling and whooping.

Debbie had heard them from her room, Fiona’s theatrical whisper of _you’ll wake the kids_ and the mystery guy’s answering whisper, too low for Debbie to catch, that had sent Fiona into a fit of laughter.

She’d heard the kissing noises that had followed, broken in between by the sound of rough clothes on skin, until finally Fiona’s door had shut with a thud, cutting off the sounds.

Later, Debbie had heard the guy leave, his hushed footsteps, the slight creaking of the stairs and the groan he’d let out when he’d tripped over Frank in the hallway.

Debbie wonders how long Fiona’s been sitting here, sick and hung over, with nobody for company.

“You okay?” Debbie asks as Fiona gathers her knees in her arms and hunches her shoulders, leaning her head back against the wall.

Debbie reaches out and pushes the flush.

“Yeah… just a little hung over,” Fiona replies, her voice merging with the sound of the water being sucked in. She makes a weak attempt at a smile, but it never reaches her tired eyes.

Debbie nods at her, answering her smile with a tight one of her own.

They sit in silence, Fiona’s eyes raking over Debbie’s face absently, as she rubs her arms lightly. Summer’s nearly gone, and Debbie can feel the slight chill in the air- the promise of another freezing winter ahead, another four months of counting the money over breakfast and bread-and-butter lunches and Fiona coming in later and later each night, scrambling for each job she can find.

Debbie wants to break the silence between them, because there are so things she has to ask Fiona, things like _who was that guy_ and _what happened to Roger_ and _why do you keep doing this to yourself_. She needs to tell Fiona that they’re out of milk again and Lip borrowed some money from the Squirrel Fund the other day and Carl got yet another note from the Principal.

She needs to tell Fiona that Monica called yesterday, the phone ringing out in the nearly empty house, and hung up when she realized it was Debbie, not ‘Merlot’, whoever the hell that was.

But she can already see the way Fiona’s face will fall with every word she utters, growing older right before her eyes, and how Fiona will rub her eyes, stay still for a second, and then get up and start moving again, set into perpetual motion. She knows Fiona will move until her feet grow sore, till the only thing keeping her from crashing are the cups of coffees she gulps down like a lifeline each night, a bitter medicine she thinks she needs.

Right now, though, Fiona’s sitting on the white ceramic floor, eyes closed and forehead uncreased. She’s silent, momentarily on pause, as the world keeps spinning around her and she makes no move to try and stop it.

Debbie doesn’t want to see the fault lines that peek out each time Fiona’s eyebrows furrow and her lips fold in. She doesn’t want to see the cracks that have become a part of Fiona now, the tiny spaces between her forced smiles and her bared teeth, the way she comes apart just a little in the middle of being Fiona and being herself.

Debbie wants to pretend that the bags under Fiona’s eyes are temporary, the side effect of too many late summer night parties instead of pacing around the kitchen all night, or pulling yet another stranger into her bed.

So Debbie lets it go. The world won't end if Fiona gets a few minutes off for once.

“I'll get you some water, okay?” Debbie asks gently. Fiona just nods.

Debbie fills up a glass of water and picks up an aspirin from the First-Aid box in her room. It’s the only proper one they have- all the pills and tablets they buy or steal always end up shoved into cupboards or on the floor, anyway.

She goes back to the bathroom to find Fiona splashing her face with water, the beads of water sticking to her lashes, leaving trails on her cheeks. Debbie thinks that this is how Fiona would look while crying, if she cried like a normal person. Except Debbie’s seen her crying, seen the way her face crumbles, all the pieces of her mask floating away as she makes one last wild stab at holding herself together, before it all comes apart. Debbie hates it, hates the way Fiona’s only truly herself when she’s crying, only truly herself when she’s not being Fiona.

Fiona wipes her face with her sleeve, then turns around and takes the glass of water from Debbie’s hands, swallowing the pill in one attempt. Debbie remembers when Fiona used to have trouble swallowing pills, and would crush them up and eat them herself. She doesn’t know when Fiona got over her fear, or when she started swallowing pills in one deft motion. She doesn’t think anyone in their family knows. Fiona’s always preferred fighting her demons alone- Debbie just doesn’t know if she does it out of choice or compulsion.

“Thanks, Debs,” Fiona smiles at her, real and bright for a second, the words filling up the entire room. They always take up so much space, these words that leave Fiona’s lips when she’s not yet ready to put her game face on.

But Debbie can see the transformation in front of her own eyes, can see her turning once again into Fiona Gallagher, fighter, sister, weight bearer, in the way Fiona brushes her hair away from her face and pulls it into a ponytail, the way she closes her eyes for a second, and then opens them again, her fake plastic smile blooming in front of Debbie’s eyes, her hands mussing up Debbie’s hair, falling back into the familiar rhythm of moving, working, doing.

Debbie made a doll once, out of scraps of newspaper and glue. Papier-mâché, she thinks it was, or some cheap variant of it anyway. She cut up all the newspapers she could find after they were done searching through them for coupons into carefully measured strips, and then painstakingly dipped them one by one in a two-parts-glue one-part-water mixture. It got in her hair and it got on her arms and some of the bits got stuck to her clothes, but she kept going, even after Carl tore up half the strips when Debbie wasn’t looking.

She stuck the strips onto one of Frank’s golf balls, a remnant of the time he tried to start a scam involving golf that failed almost before it began, and then she let the whole thing dry on the roof for the prescribed three days, constantly fending off attacks by Carl.

All the instructions in the worn-out water-stained falling-apart library book followed to a T, and Debbie’s still not sure how she messed it up so badly.

In the beginning, when the glue hadn’t dried completely, it was fine- all the strips of paper held firmly in place, bits of white peeking out from in between. It had even looked pretty much like the picture in the book.

But then Debbie had picked it up, and it had all come apart in her hands, the strips slowly falling away in clumps, one followed by two followed by five, all of them pulling each other down. In the end, all that had remained was the dirty, cracked surface of the ball and the mocking sheen of the glue.

Debbie had tried to fix it, angrily driving staple pins through the gooey, congealed mess of paper strips, tried to hold it all together with the tiny pieces of metal she’d hoped would work better than glue, but in the end all she managed to accomplish was a ball of paper strips with the pins jutting out like the outstretched claws of a monster. One of them poked its way under Debbie’s nail, almost landing her in the hospital for a tetanus shot, while all the rest eventually fell out, the hardened strips of paper peeling off one another like dry skin from rough palms.

Debbie doesn’t know why, but every time she sees Fiona change, she thinks of that.

Debbie watches as Fiona’s face reassembles in front of her eyes, the puzzle pieces all the same, but shuffling to form a new image, a new jigsaw puzzle, the changes nearly imperceptible, so the only reason Debbie can even see them is because she’s learnt to look out for them- the defiant set of Fiona’s jaw, the slight wrinkling of her nose, the way she stands just a little straighter. The only thing that never changes is the tiredness in her eyes.

“Has Lip woken up yet?” Fiona asks, gentle but brisk, each word suddenly measured, designed to make their dysfunctional family start functioning. Debbie wonders how many of Fiona’s smiles are intended for herself, and how many are carefully aimed arrows, flitting to puncture their targets cleanly each time- ‘ _I'm okay, we’ll all be okay’_ s _, ‘don’t worry sweetie’_ s and _‘we’ll make this work’_ s. All designed to keep them going.

Debbie wonders what's really holding up their house, Fiona and her hands and everything she does to make sure they’re fed, warmed and safe, or Fiona and her smiles and everything she does to make them forget how shitty they actually have it.

“I think he’s still asleep,” Debbie says softly. Only five minutes till the alarms start blaring. Five minutes till Lip and Ian starts squabbling over who gets dibs on the shower, five minutes till Fiona’s transformation is complete, till Debbie tickles Liam awake and screams at Carl to get his ass out of the bed. Five minutes till they fall back into their familiar rhythms, the always chaotic mornings in the Gallagher house and the odd structure only they know exists, the comfort of milk dripping to the floor and lunches in brown bags and the noise that nothing could possibly keep out.

Debbie only has these five minutes, and Fiona’s slipping already, being replaced in bits and pieces by Big Sister Fiona, her shoulders drooping from all the weight she has to carry.

“Then let’s go wake him up,” Fiona says, grinning at Debbie. She has that look in her eyes, the one that tells Debbie she isn’t really herself yet, not as Debbie knows her anyway, that she’s still caught in the middle of being a teenager who just wants to let it all go to hell and being the adult she’s had to act like since she was just a kid.

She grabs a mug and fills it up with water, winking at Debbie.

Debbie grins at Fiona, realizing what she’s about to do. It takes Debbie back to the time Fiona, Liam and Debbie were the only ones in the house for three entire days. And in those three days, Debbie and Fiona somehow managed to invent a bitter-charcoal flavoured cake, use up all of Fiona’s cheap drugstore makeup while giving each other makeovers, and get thrown out of six different clubs.

Debbie thinks that that was when she first realized that Fiona wasn’t just her sister, and that Fiona wasn’t her mother. Debbie still misses it.

Fiona leads Debbie out of the bathroom and into the boys’ bedroom, moving all the shit strewn around the floor haphazardly with her feet.

It’s uncharacteristically quiet, the room that’s usually filled with yelling and insults and loud, raucous laughter now filled only with the silent breathing of the four boys.

She can see Ian’s shock of red hair peeking out at her from under the covers, his blanket rising and falling with each breath he takes. He came home late again last night, sneaking in with red cheeks and a smile stretched across his lips, his collar turned up to hide the marks on his neck. Debbie knows for a fact that he wasn’t with Mandy- she came over yesterday looking for him- but Debbie hasn’t seen Ian this happy since who even knows when, so she keeps her mouth shut each time Fiona doesn’t ask Ian the questions she should.

Liam’s in his cot, his blanket bunched up and one foot hanging out of the space between the rods. He didn’t have any nightmares last night, then- he’d be curled up in a ball if he’d had. Debbie breathes a sigh of relief. If Debbie had been listening closely, she’d have heard Fiona doing the same behind her, her shoulders moving up and down with silent relief because things are okay for now.

She can't see Carl from where she’s standing- he’s been sleeping huddled up under the blanket ever since the guy he beat up got a few good punches in of his own. She knows it’s all because he doesn’t want Fiona to see the bruises on his face. She knows it doesn’t matter- Fiona will found out soon anyway. Meanwhile, though, Debbie’s glad it isn’t yet.

It’s Lip who's snoring the loudest, one arm covering his face and the other dangling out of bed, his phone pressed up under his cheek. So he stayed up late talking to Karen again.

It’s also Lip who's in for a treat.

Fiona holds up three fingers in front of Debbie’s face and then puts them down one by one.

“Ready?” Fiona whispers, smiling mischievously at Debbie.

“Ready,” Debbie whispers back, grinning.

Debbie stands up on the tips of her toes and throws Lip’s covers back just as Fiona brings up the mug of cold water and dumps it on Lip’s face.

“What the fuck?!” Lip exclaims, nearly falling out of the bed in his confusion.

And then Fiona’s laughing, clutching her stomach, shoulders thrown back and the lines on her forehead disappearing for a moment, and Debbie’s laughing with her. They don’t sound the same- they never really did. For all the talk there was of Debbie being a miniature Fiona, there was this- twin peals of laughter that don’t sound the same, but mingle with each other all the same.

The alarms start blaring as they’re rubbing the tears out of their eyes, trying to field half-assed attacks from Lip and his pillow, while Ian and Carl shout at them from under covers as Liam sleeps on undisturbed.

Time’s up.

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me what worked for you and what didn't, because I'm trying really hard to improve my writing, so all feedback is appreciated :)
> 
> I'm on tumblr at fiandvee.tumblr.com so idk, do with that what you will :)


End file.
